Recently one of our Voice Movement Therapy colleagues in South Africa, Gina Holloway Mulder, embarked on a 6 hour experiential performative seminar, sharing her research process of integrating Voice Movement Therapy and Maskwork. I was moved and excited to see pictures of her work and thought I would share some of it here with her permission
Here are her words…
THE MEETING GROUND
“The derivation of the word “personality” proves that there was originally a profound understanding of the close connection between voice and personality. The word comes from the Latin persona, which originally meant the mouthpiece of a mask used by actors (per sona: the sound of the voice passes through). From the mask the term shifted to the actor: the “person” in a drama. The word eventually came to mean any person and finally “personality,” but over the centuries it lost its symbolic connection with the voice” (Paul Moses, The Neurosis of the Voice, 1954:7).
Over a period of eight weeks I committed to engaging deeply with Maskmaking and the work of Voice Movement Therapy in order to investigate whether or not the integration of the two would lead to acoustic and or metaphorical vocal development. I worked deeply with the archetypal images and physical sensations and discoveries as well as the emotions that arose from my investigations. In the end I had created and vocally and physically explored 9 masks: the Guide, Fear, the Beggar, the Saboteur, the Mother Bird, the Nature mask, Silence, Shame and the Child. The Meeting Ground is a sharing of my process and my findings. It is a ritualized, performative, improvised and experiential exploration, which aims to move the participant/audience towards thinking and feeling differently about both their acoustic and metaphorical voice.
For more information about Gina’s research you can contact her at gina@voice360.co.za
VMTOCEANIA 